Kindred
It was Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke, but everyone felt it was only Sasuke that Kakashi saw.
It had been expected on Sakura's part, and accepted on Naruto's. Sasuke was the village's pride, the sole remnant of Uchiha, golden boy to Konoha while Naruto was village idiot, and Sakura, sadly enough, was nothing at that point but a pretty face.
When Sasuke had been younger, and more arrogant, he had assumed it was because he had been the only member of Team 7 to show any promise. Kakashi had been right, no, obligated, to single him out.
Sasuke of seventeen knows better. In the shock of his life it had been Sakura to beat him, and Naruto who was able to beat her. It was a delicate balance, he had learned, one he had disrupted by leaving. So he turned around and came back, to mixed feelings from everyone who had once loved him.
Secretly, Sasuke feared seeing his old teacher again, the one who chose him, who trained him, to the exclusion of his other students. He knew the betrayal would be easy to read in those normally apathetic features.
Kakashi smiled when he saw Sasuke. Sasuke didn't pretend to understand why.
They sat together, one day not long after his return, watching Sakura beat up on Naruto, and Naruto shrieking and enjoying it at once. Any attention from Sakura was always welcome attention to the blonde ninja. Sasuke watched them, happy with each other, and felt a stirring of jealousy. If things had been different, he might be down there too, teasing with them...
"My clan's name is cursed. All who bear it suffer." Sasuke was surprised he had said it.
"Oh really?" Kakashi's offhand comment pricked Sasuke's sense of tragedy, prompting him to reply harshly.
He looked pointedly at the forehead protector covering his instructors' left eye.
Beneath it laid the red eye with abilities only members of the Uchiha blood should be able to possess. It didn't take a genius to guess the scenario that had enabled Kakashi to come by such an asset.
"You should know better than most." Sasuke sneered.
Kakashi had smiled at that. "He was my teammate. He died on my first mission as a jounin leader. This eye was his advancement present to me."
Inwardly, Sasuke shuddered at the barbaric gift, and the fact that his teacher willingly accepted such a morbid legacy. He was familiar with regretful circumstances though, and on some level he understood and accepted that piece of the copy ninja's history.
"We never got along. He was always a warmer person than I was. Even now, I can only weep out of his eye." Kakashi said. He was quiet for some time before adding, "I don't consider that a curse, though."
Sasuke knew about debts, and what they can do to a person. He even knew how loss and expectation went hand in hand. How a village could put the weight of a clan on a survivor. How a teacher could single one boy out, wishing he was another. Even how a man could see himself reflected so painfully in a child.
Though Sasuke couldn't say for certain, he wouldn't have been surprised if fifteen years ago it was his teacher sitting where he was now, watching his teammates enviously with eyes that still matched.
"Hatake doesn't suit you." Sasuke remarked, a sense of irony twisting his lips.
Kakashi looked at Sakura and Naruto, and squinted. In the fading light, when time bled at the edges a little, they could almost pass as two other teenagers...
"Yes." Kakashi agreed. "Uchiha would've been better."